Invitation and programme

A discussion on the introduction of TEI elements for concrete and abstract
object

Tentative: Should the TEI have a typed hierarchy of its elements for real
world information?

Background

The current issue of the group is the introduction of one (or perhaps two)
elements for objects:

An element for physical objects on the same level as person, places

An element for abstract objects comparable to
work/expression/manifestation in FRBR and motif, e.g., Mona Lisa, in
line with the existing elements for person and places.

There is already an element 'object' in the Manuscript Description module.
Can this element be generalized to all physical objects as event was
extended from a specialized element for the transcription of oral material?
Could this new object element be even more generalized to cover
abstract/conceptual objects or do we need another element for conceptual
objects like work, expression, motif, etc?

Introduction

The meeting started with an introduction to the SIG and the previous work of the
SIG. The programme for the meeting was outlined and Christian-Emil Ore gave a
presentation of the topics which have been central to the work of the SIG the
last few years. After that, we moved to the main topic for the meeting, namely,
a discussion of a generalised object element.

Object element

In the previous discussion of a generalised object element for abstract and
concrete objects, two problems were faced:

Integration with the manuscript description module (TEI P5 chapter 10). This
module was speficied in too much detail too soon.

The use base for an object element. Are there any real use cases for
it?

Discussion

Should the object element be for text bearing objects only? What then about a
blank manuscript page? This is not a manuscript, but still highly relevant
for TEI encoding.

It was suggested that we could remove the ms prefix from the manuscript
description elements, which would give elements such as:

Identifier

Part

physDesc

history

Additional

It was noted that the need for a general object element is a real one; it is
common to have people coming in with objects which could have been encoded
with the manuscript description module, but which are not manuscripts and
therefore out of scope.

The elements listed above could be added in addition to the manuscript
description ones, as generalisations. This would maintain backward
compatibility; however, backward compatibility is not something that should
be maintained for any prize.

Would the content model of manuscript description work for all other objects?
The only problematic one would be the desc element. Could we add more
children to this element for non-manuscript objects where appropriate?

Then the discussion went on to different connections between textual and
"ontological" features in general. It was suggested to include for every TEI
element an "antimatter" element to make negative statement, such as "There
are no illustrations in this ms." Another option would be a policy for
negation in specified elements, as such a policy would probably not work in
general.

Conclusion

We will work towards adjusting manuscript description elements to cover all
objects, text bearing or not. In a previous attempt to do this for
paintings, it turned out that only one single element was missing, which
could easily be added.

We will make a proposal to the TEI council for this. Sebastian Rahtz will
prepare a document to council for their next face to face meeting based on
the notes from this meeting, which was sent to him.